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"I always thought paradise would be a kind of library." Jorge Luis Borges

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Under the Magnolia.

I came across this poem this morning while reading one of my favorite blogs. It was timely because in my graduate class this week we were discussing poetry and I realized how much I had been missing it lately. There is no other form that can capture so much with so little and, like the nerdy English teacher that I am, it hurts my soul that it is such a misunderstood genre. I try to teach my students that poetry is one of the most powerful ways to share their voice–it distills the most power and leaves out the unnecessary that clogs so many texts. I’ve been talking with some people lately–and even in my last post–about living thankfully and gratefully, especially for the intangible. This poem made me stop and think and breathe. And it makes me want to write.

Under the Magnolia by Carolyn MillerI give thanks because I do not havea great sorrow. My village has notburned, my child has not died, my bodyis not ravaged. I sit here on the groundlucky, lucky. Somewhere, villages are burning,somewhere, not too far away, childrenare dying; in this great urban parkpainstakingly constructed over sand dunes,people live in the flowering bushes. Butjust here, in front of me, is a bride and groom;here is a child running witha red ball; another child is rolling onthe grass. All I have to do is to decidehow much fear to let inside my heartin this fragile, created place, this bowl of grasssurrounded by palms and cypresses andshaggy-barked cedars and treeswhose names I do not know, long frondsfalling, clusters of lilac fruits depending likebouquets. All we can do is trustthat we belong here with the flowers: whiteiris and Iceland poppies, a blurof primroses, beds where flowers area crowd of color, where they close in the dark,where the first light finds them starredwith dew. The trees seem to knowwhat I do not know; even the cultivated grassunderstands some chain of being I can onlyguess at, whether it is God’s mind, orthe erotic body of the Goddess, or someabstract kind of love, orsome longing for existence that includesthe fern trees, the new buds of cones on theconifers, the white butterflies, the skating boys,the hooked new buds of the magnoliathat look like claws holding onto life, the curved thick petals of magnoliain the grass, some gone to rust, some creased,some streaked, others freckled, others magentaat the curved stem end, others cracked,all lined with long veins branching outto the petal’s edge.